Re: Virtual memory on systems with a lot of RAM

Miha wrote:
But I don't get this "To take advantage". How can be using slow hard
drive advantage over using 1000x times faster RAM if having plenty of
RAM?


Miha

This is a over-simplified, but ... RAM will hold most everything you need
that you're running. Being interpretive, XP will, when the time is not
otherwise used, make guesses at what else you might want to do and toss that
into virtual ram. That can even include apps related to the app you're
running, and which you've run and closed down. So, immediate-use things are
in RAM. "Maybe" use stuff gets flowed off into VM. Graphics and
especiallly video will fill your couple Gig RAM quickly so you'll see the
pagefile growing then if you were to watch it. I'm referring to the editors
here, not to the images themselves.
Things are constantly being swapped back and forth between RAM and
Virtual RAM as you change the things you do in a program and work on various
other things, and especially when you have multiple applications running all
at once is when you'll definitely see advantages.
The more RAM you have, the less (not nothing) you have in VM, so the
faster things can run. For normal processes, XP likes to have 512 to a Gig
of RAM, so you're in decent shape. Remember, there's a lot going on behind
the scenes in an os.

HTH
Pop`


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